It Does Not Compute

We can get nearly unanimous agreement, from citizens with and without insurance, on the following problem statement: Insurance premiums are rising too fast and too many insurance providers are not playing fair with their customers.

If your political world view tells you the federal government can efficiently provide services to individuals, then you support President Obama’s health care reform. You support the public option concept, creating a publicly operated health insurance agency to compete with private insurance companies and keep them honest.

If your political world view tells you the federal government is an inefficient provider of services to individuals, then you are opposed to President Obama’s health care reform. You support increasing private competition as the best way to keep private insurance companies honest.

The irony is that President Obama plans to pay for the public option by removing fraud, waste and abuse from the current federally operated insurance programs – Medicare and Medicaid. If the government is an efficient provider, there would not be any fraud , waste and abuse to remove. It is illogical to claim government as both the epitome of efficiency and a well-known source of fraud, waste and abuse.